


Choke Chain

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, But it's there, Demon!Dean, F/M, Gore, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post Season 9, Violence, cw: alcoholism, cw: drug use, cw: suicide attempt, the Dean/Cas is not explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 22:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2042796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a long time after he leaves the bunker, Dean doesn’t think. Couldn’t, even if he tried. He follows instructions, moves on auto pilot, and isn’t even sure of who the voice barking orders belongs to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choke Chain

For a long time after he leaves the bunker, Dean doesn’t think. Couldn’t, even if he tried. He follows instructions, moves on auto pilot, and isn’t even sure of who the voice barking orders belongs to.

He sees the world through the inside of his own eyelids, tinged with red, a film of flesh and blood that separates him from reality. It’s nearly a month before it peels back, as if being torn away with fingernails, and he blinks against the natural view of the world to find himself alive, or something close to it.

He also finds Crowley, waiting. Watching him. A smirking face in the center of his vision, standing with a hand rested casually on the flank of a hellhound whose shoulders reach his own.

Dean can see it, it’s raised hackles, it’s gaping maw, can feel the churning filth of Hell bubbling in his veins, and innately he knows exactly what he is. He looks at the hellhound and he can see beyond what’s there. He can see where it’s been. What it’s been eating.

Not too long ago, the smell of congealed blood, the sight of gristle hanging from the hellhound’s jaw would have had him fighting back memories of Indiana; of the cold, sick feeling of his organs spilling out between his fingers. Now he looks and sees and doesn’t care. Is unmoved by the memory of twitching, slurping, thrashing red that rolls off the hound’s matted fur like vapor. Unshaken by the slick-drip splatter that glints from it’s paws, tinged sickly yellow in the evening lamplight.

“Wondered when you’d check back in,” Crowley says, removing his hand from the hound’s flank and shoving it into the pocket of his overcoat before he turns and walks toward a nearby building. He glances back over his shoulder and whistles. The hound follows him.

So does Dean.

***

He ditches Crowley within a week and sets out on his own.

It’s not that he didn’t get a kick out of the tasks Crowley set him to—he’s all for the mutilation of those who have it coming, after all—but the fact that they were tasks nagged at him. Itched like a rash on his insides. His entire human life had been spent—wasted, he decides—following the orders of his father. That life is over. Anyone who expects him to follow instructions in this life too can get intimately acquainted with the sharp end of his knife.

He’s the crackle-pop of fire, now. He’s the ash and teeth and brittle bone. If Heaven is a place on Earth, Hell is the people that destroy it, and Dean’s going to beat them at their own game.

Eventually, anyway.

Right now he’s just enjoying the downtime that his new state has afforded him. The freedom from guilt, from expectations, from humanity.

Demonhood, he’s decided, isn’t half bad.

So he sits tonight in a bar in Detroit, watching the people who come and go and trying to decide which shade of want to address first; the fight or the fuck.

His mind is distorted by lust for blood and lust for skin in a way that somehow feels more like clarity than anything he’d ever known as a human. He’s decided to embrace it.

A man in a collared shirt, unbuttoned to expose the skin of his throat, walks in, and Dean eyes him. He’s lean, and tall, and his polished shoes click over the floorboards as he crosses the room. He looks like kind of a douchebag, all things considered. Has that calculating tilt to his smile that could mean he’s out on the prowl or looking to steal someones wallet.

Could go either way, Dean thinks, and downs the rest of his drink before he makes his way over. When he gets close enough to see the thin stubble at his jaw, the glint in his brown eyes when they trail over Dean, he decides to put the fight on the backburner. He turns on the charm.

"I’d offer to buy you a drink," Dean says, leaning back against the bar and letting his gaze roam freely over the guy’s throat and the tattoos winding out from under the sleeve of his shirt, "but I don’t think we’ll be here that long."

This is something he couldn’t have done before. Could never quite get past the fear that this particular want always put in him, despite how frequent it was. How strong.

Now, he’s past that. He sees, he wants, he has. Screw the consequences.

The guy raises his eyebrows a little at Dean’s bluntness, but the look of surprise is quickly replaced with one of interest, and Dean bites his lower lip before he pushes away from the bar.

"You coming?" he asks without turning back, and the reply comes from close behind him, a low, smirking voice that makes Dean glad he didn’t settle on a fight tonight.

"Something tells me I will be."

***

Turns out, the guy’s name is Luis, and he likes to be bitten. All the more fun for Dean.

"You ever gonna tell me your name?" he asks between grunts, gripping the doorframe of the motel bathroom as Dean slides a hand up into his dark hair.

Dean doesn’t answer. Just roughly yanks his head back to press his teeth against the tendons in Luis’ neck as he pounds into him, a relentless rhythm that has him slick with sweat, his body tense and poised at the edge. He waits until Luis comes before he lets himself tip over it.

He might be a demon, but he’s got a reputation to uphold. Still, he laughs when Luis asks for his number.

"This was great," he says, buttoning his fly and heading toward the door, "but you’re not gonna see me again."

He’s energized, and when he steps out into the chill night air, he bounces on his heels. His knuckles itch for something to break. It’s not a particularly bad part of town that he’s in, but it won’t take him long to get there.

When he reaches the side street where he left the Impala, tires pressed against the curb, there’s a skinny, pasty kid trying to jimmy the lock with a coathanger. A blade is in Dean’s hand before he even thinks about it.

Dean doesn’t much care about the car anymore, but most of his weapons are in the trunk, and those he likes. Those he needs. He stabs the guy on principle. Leaves him laying in a puddle of his own blood on the dirty pavement and drives until he finds another bar. Another fight. Another body to sink into, to let sink into him.

***

A few days later, he’s at a strip club in Nevada, sinking back against sticky vinyl to watch two women writhing like snakes on the stage when he hears the seat beside him creak. When he looks over he sees something he hadn’t anticipated. Someone.

All the air leaves his lungs in a low whoosh before he can stop it.

"You’ve been difficult to track," Castiel says.

He’s not looking at Dean directly. Instead, his gaze is set firmly on the dancing women, his brow wrinkled and mouth flat. It bothers Dean more than he thinks it should.

"Maybe that’s because I didn’t want to be found," Dean points out, and Castiel nods.

"I’m sure you didn’t think that would stop me from trying."

"Yeah," Dean says, making no secret of the way he’s appraising the sliver of skin at Castiel’s throat, "you never did know how to take a hint, did you?"

Castiel looks at him sharply, then. His voice a little shaky when he speaks.

"I know you think you’re being very clever right now, Dean, but you’re not. You’re destroying yourself."

It makes Dean smirk, that tremor, to know that Castiel is affected by his words. Is scared of him, maybe. He licks his lips, slowly, and Castiel’s eyes narrow.

"It’s only a matter of time until—"

"Until what?" Dean asks, "You’re gonna be forced to stop me?"

Castiel doesn’t answer, and Dean leans toward him. Brings his face close enough that Castiel must feel his breath on his cheek, and drops his voice low.

"You gonna kill me, Cas?"

He glances down to Castiel’s mouth, then meets his eyes, lets his grin spread slow. Castiel just stares at him, resolute, despite the still-present tremble in his voice.

"If I must."

Dean laughs.

"Right. Good luck with that," he says, and sits back up, turns his attention to the women on stage, "in the meantime, unless you’re gonna start taking your clothes off too, it’s time for you to go."

He doesn’t see Castiel leave, but he hears it. The telltale rustle of wings. Knowing that Castiel can fly again makes him feel oddly… not hopeful, exactly. But it’s close. Nostalgic, maybe. He doesn’t like it. He fixes his eyes on the swell of the nearest stripper’s breasts, the smooth undulation of her hips, and drinks until the feeling goes. It doesn’t take long.

***

There’s a nest of vampires in New Orleans, and he kicks down their door in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, wild with a lust for blood. It’s twelve against one, but the first blade is singing in his hand, and he slices through their necks one after another. It’s too easy, in the end, and even as he’s killing the last of them he realizes he’s bored. He decides he needs to sate his other appetite again, and spends the rest of the afternoon and night in a brothel near the river.

Dawn is approaching when he steps outside for a smoke, and soon after he hears the sound of wings. Tastes the ozone in the air that announces the arrival of an angel. He recognizes her after a moment. Hannah. He remembers her from before. Remembers the way she looked at him like he was a bug that needed to be squashed before it scurried too close for comfort. She approaches him on her own, dressed in the familiar business casual of Heaven, and he pushes away from the wall he’s been leaning on to face her head on.

"Let me guess," he says, "Cas sent you to try and… what? Make me come to my senses?"

"Castiel didn’t send me," she says, and there’s a hint of disdain to her tone, as though she wishes he had, "I’m here of my own volition."

A blade slides from her sleeve. Dean raises one eyebrow. Points toward his forearm as he taps away the ash from the end of his cigarette.

"You do realize I’m invincible, right?"

"I have a theory," she says, spinning the blade, "about cutting it off."

She doesn’t get to try. He puts the cigarette back between his lips, catches her arm mid-swing, and slams the first blade between her ribs. He feels it push out into the air behind her. Sees the flicker of grace in her eyes. Hears the high pitched whine of her true voice screaming, like humming glass amplified.

When she falls, the black char of her wingspan spreads up onto the wall, down over the pavement.

"Nice theory," Dean says, taking one last drag before dropping the cigarette and crushing it with his toe, right over the spread of her left wing.

He leaves. Day has not yet broken.

***

In California, there’s a blonde in a leather jacket giving him eyes from beside the jukebox, and when he heads over she introduces him to her boyfriend. He’s a thick wall of muscle, and he looks from his girlfriend to Dean like he’s just won the lottery.

Dean goes home with them, and as the three of them make a thorough mess of the sheets he wonders if it’s always been this easy. If he’d been missing out all those years that he denied himself half his desires.

When he leaves their home he can still taste them both on his fingers.

***

He runs into a pack of demons in Idaho, and leaves their meatsuits limp and bloody on the pavement outside a liquor store.

They made the mistake of thinking he was one of them. He might be a demon now, but he’s still better than them.

He knows that much.

***

Time wears on, and slowly, little by little, Dean notices himself becoming bored again. Time drags. He sees little but bloodshot eyes and slow-melting ice. A cliche crawls from another bartenders disinterested lips, but all Dean sees are young hands squeaking an old towel over a wet beerglass. There’s no smokehaze in this bar. Just soundhaze. Headhaze. Eyehaze. Nothing external to cloud his mind, but it’s clouded anyway.

The squeaking glass is too loud, louder than the crowd. It echoes in his skull, a high pitched whine, and something shifts. A memory.

That sound.

A memory.

The past runs in like a wolf. It rears its head and howls. For the first time since his soul twisted within him, burnt out like a bulb and left nothing but smoke behind, Dean leaves the bar unsated.

***

The shape of Hannah’s wings is still there, seared into the ground like a brand, and Dean stares down at the dark lines with little understanding of what he’s supposed to do. Why he came here.

He feels guilt. He shouldn’t feel guilt. He’s free of guilt, or he’s supposed to be. Carefully, he leans down and presses his fingers against the pavement and feels the hum of energy that still exists. Plucks a blade of grass from where it’s shot up through a crack in the concrete and fights the long-forgotten feeling of a lump in his throat before he crushes it, throws it away.

He drowns himself in liquor for three days straight. Drinks and fucks and fights and ignores the nagging itch at his core that tells him this is just the beginning.

***

It isn’t long after that the sex stops feeling good. Even the fighting stops feeling good. Hedonism is no fun when there’s no pleasure being derived from it, and Dean wonders what exactly has changed.

The sex has been plentiful and diverse and technically mindblowing, but he just isn’t feeling it anymore. It’s like there’s some wires crossed in his brain and the release endorphins switch isn’t getting the signal.

He decides it’s because he’s been playing it safe. He doesn’t have that energy from a good kill to drive him, because all the fights he’s found himself in lately have been easy and pointless.

What he needs, then, is something new. A real fight. Something brutal, something base. He needs to really destroy something. His own brother is as good a candidate as any.

***

When he returns to the bunker for the first time in months it makes his skin crawl.

All the symbols scratched into the walls send something like electricity into his bones, humming and shaking like a plucked string. He ignores it. Follows the thrum of life that is his brother as he scrambles down the hall, running from him.

The pick in his hands is heavy, and Dean slams it through the door when Sam tries to shield himself. He doesn’t say here’s Johnny, but he thinks it, and he knows his brother does too. A memory of Sam at age nine watching The Shining through his fingers in a motel in New Mexico occurs to him the moment Dean sees his face through the hole in the door, and it makes his stomach roll. Makes him experience something dangerously close to sentiment, and the feeling is so alien now, so jarring, that it does nothing but fuel his rage.

By the time he leaves there have been splinters and shouted words and a blade at his throat. He doesn’t feel like he usually does after a fight, even the lackluster ones of recent weeks. He tells himself it’s because he let Sam live.

He’s not sure why he did.

***

In Colorado, he beats a drug dealer senseless in an alley behind a steakhouse and gets his hands on enough pills to destroy the stomach lining of three men. He takes them all and doesn’t feel a thing.

***

It’s been six months since his new life began when it occurs to him that his soul might just be too damaged for anything to feel good anymore. The thought should scare him, he knows, but it doesn’t. It just settles like a weight in the pit of his stomach. He feels resigned.

He tries to kill himself but the mark on his arm throbs like a rotted tooth and brings him right back. Again and again, he tries. Tries. Tries.

Blood drains from him and he loses consciousness, and then wakes. Bleary and drymouthed and exhausted but alive. Always. Still. He doesn’t deserve this. Or maybe, he thinks, he does.

"Idiot," he says aloud, and his voice echoes through the aqueduct where he’s laying in a coagulated patch of his own blood, "fucking moron."

***

He meets them on their terms, in a warehouse outside Kansas City. They’ve painted a devil’s trap on the cement floor, ten feet wide, and Sam holds a gun on him until he steps inside it.

Castiel won’t meet his eyes. Dean thinks of Hannah and his stomach turns.

"You said you wanted to talk," Sam says, cold, "so talk."

"I fucked up," Dean says, and almost laughs at the understatement. God, he wishes he could laugh. Outside the circle, he sees Castiel’s shoulders lift a little, and he thinks he looks hopeful. Hesitantly hopeful. Sam just looks dubious.

"I don’t know what to do," Dean admits, "but I know… I…"

The mark prickles under his skin, and he rubs at it furiously. Grits his teeth. Closes his eyes before finally raising them to look at his brother, to look at Castiel. They’re waiting, poised to act, and he can feel their hope stretched thin and tenuous.

Their love for him still hasn’t waned.

He doesn’t love either of them, but he knows he should. He wants to. Wants to love them like he used to.

He forces his eyes back to green before he speaks, and the words when he finally gets them out aren’t big enough, but they’re all he’s got.

"I need help."


End file.
